This turned out longer than it was supposed to, even though it's way shorter than what I usually write XD And the timeline keeps changing, it keeps jumping backwards and forward. And it's a bit hard to keep up with... heh... I manage to be unclear way too easily.

It's also very personal text.
When I wrote it, I poured some of my own problems to it. Small details, little scenes, very, very small things that you might not see unless you know what you're looking for. I wonder if any of you could do that. I'm not asking you to.
They just colour the work. Because in those details... I know what it's like. I know it. It's personal.

Also, when I started writing it, I had no idea what it'd turn out as... yet again XD
You can see how the direction changes. At the beginning, the story sounds very different than what it is in the other parts. Heh.

That's just me. I can't plan ahead or I'll just screw it up. All I can plan ahead are some details. And they might not even end up in the final work.

Sad, really.

But try to enjoy it anyway! The quality sucks quite a lot 'cause... w-well... XD uhh. It's originally written in Finnish, and I am NOT good at that. Then I translated it in English. AND I SUCK WITH THAT TOO. Pathetic. I can write extremely well in English but... translating and writing with my first language... pure shit.

Disclaimer: I do not own Death note.

STRAWBERRY TEARS


"…It seems like the only way I could've saved us…

…would've been to turn back time so we'd never even met…"


ACT I


I sink under a steaming mass of water, feeling porcelain against my back and slide lower against it.

The burning hot water surrounds me, shakes my sickly thin body, feeds my sickness and washes my skin. Washes my skin that lacks you. Because during this time… you are not. Not here. Not with me. This room lacks you. Both of you.

I can't breathe. I don't even try. I feel the oxygen in my lungs running out slowly and the need to breathe takes over me. I shrivel slowly and see tiny stars in my vision. But breathing can wait for a moment more. First I'll concentrate to how my body boils, how it burns slowly in the hot water and raises my body temperature. A fever kills the illnesses from within, right…?

So why doesn't this illness die?

My face breaks the surface. Freezing. I take a breath. Shards of ice fill my screaming lungs and I gasp for the oxygen in pain, body shaking powerlessly.

I still sit on the tub. I move my long toes and take a strawberry candle from the cabinet next to me. Red. It's damp and uneven in my hand, maybe even a bit slimy. I press it against my face, under my nose and close my eyes.

The aroma.

Strawberry.

I take another breath, gasp for it and die from the inside. It eats me.

Because I can't eat strawberry without making it corrode me. I can't smell it without making it spread to my body like a gas and deprave it. I can't look at it without feeling myself freeze up, emotions getting lost. To protect myself.

My hand shakes weakly. I put the candle back to its place and sit up. I wash my hands in the hot water. Warm me up. Because he isn't here to warm me. All I have is a bowl of strawberries in multiple shapes and conditions, but not the perfect one which's smell relaxes me and taste takes me to my own personal heaven that's ripped in pieces, a prisoner of a dark forest, the kingdom of shadows. I make the water trickle to down my hair. It patters, pours to my neck and down my shoulders.

I suddenly stand up, water splashing around and walk in front of a mirror. I look at the reflection. It scares me. It's not me. But it is me. It has all the features that I do, including the details.

But when I look at it, it's not me. Dead eyes. Worn frame. I look like I'm possessed by the devil, and I'll never reach the state where I was. Once some time ago. When you saved me.

…But you didn't heal me; you just fed my illness and now I'm not a human anymore.


ACT II


A steaming cup of hot chocolate, richly brown, creamily flowing. A blanket over my shoulders. It's hairy and tickles me, rubbing against my bare skin. I move slightly, trying to put it better on. My knees are against my chest and my glance is directed downwards, not seeing the old, beautiful carpet that should've been in my vision. There's something very different in my eyes.

A scene stuck in my mind. The one I knew would come but never assumed to shock me so badly. I tremble uncontrollably when I think about it. Whispering voices a few metres behind me, at the door… I can't make out what they're speaking of. Maybe if I could concentrate. But right now I can't. My body's convulsing and my eyes are moving around, focusing on nothing.

You're killing me.

You're killing me, you… how can my saviour… how can you do this to me? You know that I need you, bastard. You know it very well. I need you. You're all I've got in this world.

Why did you do this? Why did you leave… like this?

You killed me. You drugged me and laid on a sterilised bedplate, took out your needle and whispered calming words in my ear before you stuck it in my vein and injected your poisons to my bloodstream where they took over me, tried to revive me but finally ended up killing me.

How could you!

A hand on my shoulder. Thin, scrawny fingers, gently there. He puts the blanket better on me and wraps it around my bare chest. I don't look upwards, I just concentrate in these physical touches. This person doesn't hug me, doesn't smother me and say that it'll be alright. He isn't sorry for what I've seen, nor that this happened to me. He isn't making me go anywhere. He walks further away, opens a closet, which I can conclude from a low creak, pulls out a white shirt and walks over to me, offering it.

For a mere fragment of a second I glance upwards. He motions for me to pull the shirt on. I do it with shaky and numb hands and feel the good-quality fabric against my skin. I look at him again. He offers me the cup of hot chocolate again and stirs it with a silver spoon, making the substance flow in a circle.

I slurp at the substance carefully and try not to burn my tongue. I don't want to leave this room; I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to return to those rooms where I'm being pointed and yelled at, victimized, where they grab me and shut in the refrigerator, hint at you so you realise to save me, push my head to the toilet and hint at you so you'll come and help me stand, wiping my face, beat me up and hint at you so you'll come to take care of my bruises and walk me back to my room, talking calmingly. Not that I'd be hysteric. I'm not like that.

But I'm slowly starting to progress to the hysteric state when I think of all of that without you.

I'll die without you. I won't last a day.

Your dead body with its glowing, ashen skin can't come and be my saviour.

I drop the cup and it shatters. Hot chocolate everywhere. I gulp, not saying anything. The man in the room doesn't yelp; he doesn't scold me. He doesn't say anything, just watches, sitting on his armchair with his knees up, scanning me from afar.

"He's gone", I say. My voice isn't broken. There's nothing in it. Like ice flakes blown to the air, a silent jingle, the feeling of frost before they disappear and won't be found ever again. He nods without waiting for more and doesn't show any form of compassion.

He's just looking at me. I sense his presence, but at the same time, I don't. I raise my gaze and stare at him, like he's staring at me at the same time, hair in complete disarray and eyes like closed curtains.

I blink. He doesn't.

"…I found him. He was bluish. The whole room was stained with blood", I say and just look at his eyes. He nods and takes a cup of coffee in his hands and takes a sip without looking at me. But he listens to me, I can count on that. He's looking at me, examining and listening to every single one of my words quietly. He knows that I won't tell anything if he asks me. So he just is. Like death, sitting right there before me.

"…He didn't hear me. He didn't answer me. He just lied there. There were lines drawn by tears on his face. He's head was turned to face the nightstand. There was a picture of us from last summer. He put his camera on the grass and dragged me a bit further away, sat me down under a tree and told me to smile, sitting next to me and waited for the flash."

The man put his coffee cup down and leaned to his knees, looking at me deep in my eyes, just like analyzing. He scared me. Because he saw right through me. You could see it from his composition. I didn't confuse him, he wasn't afraid of looking at me.

"Do you feel anything?" he finally asks after several minutes of silence. I haven't moved from where I am, pressing the blanket around me, hair wet but the smell of blood still present, as a ghost feeling around me. I close my eyes and smell it. False. Such a scarily real lie.

"…No. No I don't."

Maybe it was the truth that killed you.

He gets up, walks to me being careful with the shards of porcelain on the floor and brushes my hair off my face, revealing my dark, dead eyes.

And he kisses me, soft, cold lips pressing against mine and closes his eyes, so much like you that I can't help but grasp at his shirt and kiss back.

For I am selfish, my love.


ACT III


But you never saved me either, sweetheart. At least that's what I tell myself. It helps. It helps a lot more that that you just got bored of me: got everything out of me that I had to offer and saw behind the locked doors, figuring out the rest and grew tired of looking at me lying on your bed, that old shirt of yours on me.

Sometimes you sat on your computer, a plate full of strawberries next to you and glanced at me occasionally. Glanced with that empty stare of yours, calculated the length of my legs, their thickness, the fluffiness of my hair and the shade of my skin. I lied there pale and curled up, anxiously looking at you, tired but refusing to sleep. I couldn't sleep with you in the same room. Ever.

Because I couldn't stand how you got closer to me when I was at the edge of falling asleep and kissed my lips, telling me that I'd never get him back.

No, don't get me wrong. I felt nothing. I didn't cry even once, I didn't throw a fit and burn all his belongings to ashes that I would've thrown to the cold air at the morning of his funeral, I wasn't happy to lose him. I felt nothing.

I still missed him, though. Maybe because he made me feel at least something. His back against mine, his hands forcing themselves in mine, nose against mine, that stubborn gaze and a small touch on my lips. He crossed the lines that I never thought anyone would.

Maybe he loved me.

But he was passionately loving… it made us a bad case. Because with me, it's hard to keep passion, love and the small touches up. I'm just not like that. I love by being present. My love can be seen from not crawling under my bed to my own dark spot and shutting down the world around me. He understood that, but maybe he thought that he could break those limits.

Maybe he grew tired. Maybe he couldn't handle the burden I became. But because he couldn't just sweep me away, he did it to himself. Jumped from a high place with no flow of the air, slit with an icicle and let the snow drown him inside of itself so he wouldn't feel anything. Still he chose to think of me when he died.

Blood. A photograph. A bloody photograph.

An apple-pie on your nightstand, a card full of phrases of love to me for when I'd find it, promised kisses in the past, present and future, the tear stained ink with which you wrote to a white paper and promised me undying love even though you decided to shut your own door for the world.

It incised me and wrested my insides, damaging them permanently.

But you, my cold-blooded beauty, couldn't care less.

You looked at me silently from your chair when I pressed my forehead against the frost's cooled window and closed my eyes, feeling the same coldness that'd radiated from him. I breathed quietly and irregularly, frosting the clear glass, opened my eyes and saw snowflakes sinking to the ground.

In the middle of your work when I grew frustrated and hated myself and my numbness, you never did more than glance at me blankly when I found my joy with your scissors and my blood.

Because you never wanted to stop me. You wanted me to get over it as I saw fit, never offered any other comfort than your soft lips on mine and hands all over on a soft bed. You never told me to cry, you never got angry at me because I didn't.

Because you, my love, couldn't care less. The only thing that you were interested in was my mind squirming and reforming as the frosty white mist got me lost and the black shadows haunted me behind the corners.

And I still can't eat the apple-pie that you anxiously offered me.


ACT IV


I'm nailing a straw doll on my wall. The work is compulsive.

Strike after strike I nail you in my room, so much alike those where I spent my time someday so long ago, bleeding blood and happiness to the floor, ripping small animals' insides from their right places.

One here, right across the door, to the height of my hip, because it's the height where we were when we sat back then on the cold floor, surrounded by schoolbooks and kissed for the first time. Strike after strike. I can see clearly how the blood that doesn't exist pours down the wall to the floor when I desperately kill my memories, but still strongly reviving them.

Another one in here, to the right wall, a bit higher, because this time I was sitting on your couch, dear Lawli, when you ever so softly touched me reminding me so much of what I had lost, untruthfully too, when you pressed your deadly lips on mine.

Both of your lips, blue and icy, soft and flawless against mine, sucking on my heat so you could warm and melt yourself after wandering in the blizzard.

And when you were warm, you melted and dripped water, you rained to the floor silently pattering and crashed down, told me that you'd love me forever but pushed me away from your life for good, and I never saw you again.


Even though you promised.

One in here, to the left wall, at the height of the bed from where I found you, my darling. Where I found you drowned to the satin-red, your blossoming beauty withered away, remaining as a distant shadow of what it was thanks to your ice-glittered blood.

I manage to hit my finger hard. The pain spreads and I gasp for air in pain, without crying or wailing. My whole hand is shaking and my finger's burning hot.

You're killing me, A. You killed me. Even though you promised that you'd never kill me.

And so I rush out of the room, slam the door shut and lock it.

I go to the fridge and pick up apple-pie and a bowl of strawberries before I return to the room with slow steps, open the door and look around. I lock it again. I lay the pie and the strawberries to the middle of the room and lit up two red candles.

I put a slice of the pie to my mouth and cry internally, remembering what it was like when I ate it with you, A, years back. Its taste fills my mouth, full and soft, rich and delicious.

I put a strawberry in my mouth and chew on it with my mouth open so that its juice trickles down my chin and stains my shirt.

I knock down the candles and watch as the fire starts. I close my eyes and take another slice of the pie, lie down on my back and look at the ceiling with empty eyes.

"Merry Christmas, Autumn and Lawliet."

And as the room's filled with flames, the devilish sound of the fire alarm shatters my dreams of the love that I'll never reach again.

"Merry Christmas, Autumn and Lawliet."

And I crush the strawberry in my hands, draw lines down my cheeks with its juice, my own strawberry tears of love that died, and love, that was thrown away.

Umm... Mind reviewing? D: I sort of like reviews. Love them. They cheer up my day so much. And I want to hear your opinions and critism. :)
Thanks a lot for reading 'til the end! I'm so... I'm so happy you did that.
Thank you! :D